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 57

Chapter 8 - TEST
ISLAM

I. Multiple Choice (1 point each)

1. Who is considered the founder of Islam?

a) Abdul
b) Elijah
c) Muhammad
d) Allah

2. Where was the founder of Islam born?

a) Damascus
b) Mecca
c) Baghdad
d) Hadith

3. What event in 622 marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar?

a) The hejira
b) The mihrab
c) The hajj
d) Ramadan

4. What is the significance of the Ka’bah?

a) Muhammad lived there as a young man.

b) It was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate.
c) It is the site of the largest mosque in Islam.
d) Muhammad established it as the spiritual center of Islam

5. What is the meaning of the word “Islam”?

a) obedience to Muhammad
b) submission to God
c) acceptance of the Sharia legal code
58

d) commitment to charitable acts

6. How is the Qur’an organized?

a) It is divided into seven large-scale subsections.

b) It is divided into 114 sûras.
c) It is divided into four separate volumes.
d) It consists of a single very long, undivided chapter.

7. What is the original language of the Qur’an?

a) Arabic
b) Hebrew
c) Persian
d) Latin

8. What is the name of the body of literature which consists of authoritative

commentaries on the Qur’an and explanations of oral traditions?

a) The Shari’a
b) The Taj Mahal
c) The Alhambra
d) The Hadith

9. What is the name of the Islamic Legal code?

a) The Law of Muhammad

b) Al- Khwarizmi
c) Sharia
d) Sûra

10. What is the purpose of minarets adjacent to a mosque?

a) To ward off temptation

b) To call the faithful to prayer
c) To guide the faithful to Mecca
d) To provide a private space for meditation

11. What building in Jerusalem is one of the earliest and most spectacular
achievements of Islamic architecture?
 59

a) The Great Mosque

b) The Shrine of Muhammad
c) The Dome of the Rock
d) The Ka’bah

12. How many sides are there to the Dome of the Rock?

a) three
b) six
c) eight
d) ten

13. What is interesting about the site of The Great Mosque of Damascus?

a) The site was once a pagan burial ground.

b) The site was once a Christian basilica.
c) The site once housed a Platonic academy.
d) The site is in the capital of the Abbasid Dynasty.

14. What city became the Muslim capital in Spain?

a) Madrid
b) Seville
c) Valencia
d) Córdoba

15. What was the goal of the Reconquista?

a) To drive the Muslims out of Spain

b) To conquer the remnants of the Roman Empire
c) To eliminate Christianity in Spain
d) To promote Islam in all reaches of the known world

16. What was the name of the palace complex in Granada that escaped destruction
during the Reconquista?

a) Al-Uqlidisi
b) Hadith
c) Alhambra
60

d) Mecca

17. Which of the Islamic traditions discussed in the text has the largest following?

a) Shiite
b) Sunni
c) Sufi
d) Hindu

18. What explanation is given for the rapid spread of Islam?

a) The simplicity of its original teachings

b) The freedom granted to its adherents
c) The beauty of Islamic writings
d) The glorious afterlife promised in the Qur’an

19. What language did the Sufi mystic Rumi use in writing his religious verse?

a) Persian
b) Arabic
c) Hindu
d) Urdu

20. What was distinctive about the way Rumi recited his poetry?

a) He recited in a whisper.
b) He danced while reciting.
c) He chanted in harmony with other Sufis.
d) He recited only while lying down.

21. What city was the political and cultural capital of the Abbasid Dynasty?

a) Damascus
b) Jerusalem
c) Baghdad
d) Cairo

22. What was the focus of Averröes’ scholarly work?

a) To find a cure for small pox

 61

b) To reconcile Greek philosophy with Islam

c) To discredit Greek philosophy
d) To study the nature of poison

23. How did scholars working in Baghdad's “House of Wisdom” contribute to

the dissemination of Aristotle’s writings in the West?

a) They published Latin translations of Aristotle’s works.

b) They translated Aristotle’s works into Arabic.
c) They founded the first Aristotelian Academy in Islam.
d) They discovered previously unknown writings by Aristotle.

24. Which Spanish physician stressed personal hygiene as disease-prevention?

a) Al-Uqlidisi
b) Rumi
c) Averröes
d) Moses Maimonides

25. Which Muslim scholar invented algebra and created a modern numerical
system?

a) Moses Maimonides
b) Al-Khwarizmi
c) Al-Hazen
d) Rhazes
62

II. Short Answer Questions (3 points each)

1. What are the five pillars of Islam?

2. Who is Rabia? What did she do? What did she believe?

3. Why are mosques decorated with abstract art and calligraphy rather than pictorial
representations?

4. What religious legends surround the location of the Dome of the Rock?

5. Why are translations of the Qur’an not considered to be authentic but rather glosses of
the original?
 63

III. Key Terms (1 point each)

1. _______________________ Decoration using complex interlaced lines

2. _______________________
3. _______________________
4. _______________________
Muhammad must be descendants of Ali.
5. _______________________
6. _______________________
7. _______________________
8. _______________________
prayers
9. _______________________
rubaiyat
10. _______________________
Spiritual and civil leader of the Islamic state
A pilgrimage to Mecca
Denomination that believes that successors of
A sophisticated form of Arabic script
Niche inside mosque which faces Mecca
The pulpit in an Islamic mosque
Crier who calls Muslim worshipers to daily
Persian scholar and poet famous for his
The fasting month in the Muslim calendar

Chapter 8 – TEST Answer Key

I. Multiple Choice

1. c
2. b
3. a
4. d
5. b
6. b
7. a
8. d
9. c
10. b
11. c
12. c
13. b
14. d
15. a
64

16. c
17. b
18. a
19. a
20. b
21. c
22. b
23. b
24. d
25. b

II. Short Answer Questions

1. The five pillars of Islam are as follows:

− to believe and recite that there is one God

− to pray five times each day facing Mecca
− to donate to charity
− to fast during the holy month of Ramadan
− to make a pilgrimage to Mecca

2. Rabia was a Sufi woman who lived in the eighth century. When she was freed from
slavery, she believed that she was one of God’s chosen ones. She held that deep love
of God was the path toward having a spiritual union with him. She wrote poetry,
aphorisms, and meditations focused on nurturing and understanding this love.

3. According to the Islamic faith, it is impudent to portray God’s image or the image of his
most cherished creation, man; therefore, Islamic decoration is in the form of abstract art
and calligraphy rather than pictorial representations.

4. Some believe it to be the site where the Prophet Muhammad stopped on this journey to
heaven. Others hold that it was where Abraham sacrificed his son Ishmael, and some
maintain the mosque rests on the location where Adam died and is buried.

5. The Qur’an is written in Arabic and, because this was the language through which God
spoke to Muhammad, any translations are not considered authentic, but rather
interpretations.

III. Key Terms

1. Arabesque
2. Caliph
3. Hajj
4. Shia
 65

5. Kufic
6. Mihrab
7. Minbar
8. Muezzin
9. Omar Khayyam
10. Ramadan
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
“WEARING JEWSEPPY’S COAT, AND WAS GRINDING AWAY AT THE ORGAN.”

“At this point the gorilla hauled Jewseppy in and gave him a fairly
good thrashing for wasting his time in conversation. When the man
came around again with the plate I told him that he was taking in
more money than he had ever taken in before, and that this ought to
console him, even if the consciousness that he was doing justice to
the oppressed had no charms for him. I’m sorry to say that
Jewseppy used such bad language that I really couldn’t stay and
listen to him any longer. I understood him to say that the gorilla took
possession of every penny that was collected, and would be sure to
spend it on himself, but as this was only what Jewseppy had been
accustomed to do it ought not to have irritated a man with a real
sense of justice. Of course I was sorry that the little man was being ill
treated, but he was tough, and I thought that it would not hurt him if
the gorilla were to carry out his course of instruction in the duty of
elevating the oppressed a little longer. I have always been sort of
sorry that I did not interfere, for although Jewseppy was only a
foreigner who couldn’t vote, and was besides altogether too set in
his ideas, I didn’t want him to come to any real harm. After that day
no man ever saw Jewseppy, dead or alive. He was seen about dusk
two or three miles from town on the road to Sheboygan. He was still
tied to the rope and was using a lot of bad language, while the gorilla
was frequently reminding him with the whip of the real duties of his
station and the folly of discontent and rebellion. That was the last
anybody ever saw of the Italian. The gorilla turned up the next day at
a neighboring town with his organ, but without anybody to take up
the collection for him, and as the menagerie happened to be there
the menagerie men captured him and put him back in his old cage,
after having confiscated the organ. No one thought of making any
search for Jewseppy, for, as I have said, he had never been
naturalized and had no vote, and there were not enough Italians in
that part of the country to induce any one to take an interest in
bringing them to the polls. It was generally believed that the gorilla
had made away with Jewseppy, thinking that he could carry on the
organ business to more advantage without him. It’s always been my
impression that if Jewseppy had lived he would have been cured of
the desire to elevate the down-trodden, except, of course, in foreign
countries. He was an excellent little man—enthusiastic, warm-
hearted, and really believing in his talk about the rights of monkeys
and the duty of elevating everybody. But there isn’t the least doubt
that he made a mistake when he tried to do justice to that gorilla.”
 THAT LITTLE FRENCHMAN.
“Does anybody doubt my patriotism?” asked the Colonel. We all
hastened to say that we should as soon doubt our own existence.
Had he not made a speech no longer ago than last Fourth of July,
showing that America was destined to have a population of
1,000,000,000 and that England was on the verge of extinction? Had
he not perilled his life in the cause of freedom, and was he not
tireless in insisting that every Chinaman should be driven out of the
United States? If there ever was one American more patriotic than
another it was the Colonel.
“Well, then,” continued the speaker, “you won’t misunderstand me
when I say that the American railroad car is a hundred times more
dangerous than these European compartment cars. In thirty years
there have been just four felonious assaults in English railroad cars.
There have been a few more than that in France, but not a single
one in Germany. Now, I admit that you are in no danger of being shot
in an American car, unless, of course, two gentlemen happen to
have a difficulty and shoot wild, or unless the train is held up by train
robbers who are a little too free with their weapons. But I do say that
the way in which we heat our cars with coal-stoves kills thousands of
passengers with pneumonia and burns hundreds alive when the
trains are wrecked.
“You see, I’ve looked into this thing and I’ve got the statistics down
fine. I’m the only man I know who ever had any trouble with a
passenger while travelling in Europe, and I don’t mind telling you
about it, although it will be giving myself away. Kindly push me over
those matches, will you? These French cigars take a lot of fuel, and
you have to encourage them with a match every three minutes if you
expect them to burn.
“When I was over here in Paris, ten years ago, there was a fellow
here from Chicago who was trying to introduce American cars, and
he gave me a pamphlet he had got up showing the horrors of the
compartment system. It told of half a dozen murders, fifteen
assaults, eleven cases of blackmail, and four cases in which a
solitary traveller was shut up in a compartment with a lunatic—all
these incidents having occurred on European railways. I was on my
way to Egypt, and when I had read the pamphlet I began to wonder if
I should ever manage to live through the railroad journey without
being killed, or blackmailed, or lunaticked, or something of the kind.
You see, I believed the stories then, though I know now that about
half of them were false.
“I took the express train—the Peninsular and Oriental they call it—
from Paris about twelve o’clock one night. I went early to the train,
and until just before we started I thought I was going to have the
compartment to myself. All at once a man very much out of breath
jumped in, the door was slammed, and we were off.
 “‘DOES ANYBODY DOUBT MY PATRIOTISM?’ ASKED THE COLONEL.”

“I didn’t like the looks of the fellow. He was a Frenchman, though

of course that wasn’t his fault. He was small but wiry-looking, and his
sharp black eyes were not the style of eyes that inspires me with
confidence. Then he had no baggage except a small paper parcel,
which was queer, considering that the train was a long-distance one.
I kept a close watch on him for a while, thinking that he might be one
of the professional lunatics that, according to the Chicago chap’s
pamphlet, are always travelling in order to frighten solitary
passengers; but after a while I became so sleepy that I decided to lie
down and take a nap and my chances of being killed at the same
time. Just then the man gets up and begins to talk to me in French.
“Now, I needn’t say that I don’t speak French nor any of those fool
languages. Good American is good enough for me. One reason why
these Europeans have been enslaved for centuries is that they can’t
make each other understand their views without shouting at the top
of their lungs, and so bringing the police about their ears. But I did
happen to know, or thought I did, the French word for going to sleep,
and so I thought I would just heave it at this chap so that he would
understand that I didn’t require his conversation. I have always found
that if you talk to a Frenchman in English very slowly and
impressively he will get the hang of what you say. That is, if he isn’t a
cabman. You can’t get an idea into a French cabman’s head unless
you work it in with a club. So I said to the fellow in the train: ‘My
friend! I haven’t any time to waste in general conversation. I’m going
to sleep, and I advise you to do the same. You can tell me all about
your institutions and your revolutions and things in the morning.’ And
then I hove in the French word ‘cochon,’ which I supposed meant
something like ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’
“The fellow staggered back as if I had hit him, and then he began
to sling the whole French language at me. I calculate that he could
have given Bob Ingersoll fifty points in a hundred and beaten him,
and, as you know, Bob is the ablest vituperator now in the business.
The Frenchman kept on raving and getting madder and madder
every minute, and I saw that there wasn’t the least doubt that he was
a dangerous lunatic.
“I stood up and let him talk for a while, occasionally saying ‘non
comprenny’ and ‘cochon,’ just to soothe him, but presently he came
close to me and shook his fist in my face. This was too much, so I
took him by the shoulders and slammed him down in a corner seat,
and said, ‘You sit there, sonny, and keep quiet, or you’ll end by
getting me to argue with you.’ But the minute I let go of him he
bounced up again as if he was made of India-rubber, and came at
me just as a terrier will come at a horse, pretending that he is going
to tear him into small pieces. So I slammed him down into his corner
again, and said, ‘This foolishness has gone far enough, and we’ll
have it stopped right here. Didn’t you hear me say cochon? I’m going
to cochon, and you’d better cochon, too, or I’ll make you.’
“This time he jumped up as soon as I had let go of him and tried to
hit me. Of course I didn’t want to hit so small a chap, letting alone
that he knew no more about handling his fists than the angel Gabriel,
so I just took and twisted his arms behind his back and tied them
with a shawl-strap. Then, seeing as he showed a reprehensible
disposition to kick, I put another strap around his legs and stretched
him on the seat with his bundle under his head. But kindness was
thrown away on that Frenchman. He tried to bite me, and not content
with spitting like a cat, he set up a yell that was the next thing to the
locomotive whistle, and rolling off the seat tried to kick at me with
both legs.
“I let him exercise himself for a few minutes, while I got my hair-
brush and some twine out of my bag. Then I put him back on the
seat, gagged him with the handle of the hair-brush, and lashed him
to the arm of the seat so that he couldn’t roll off. Then I offered him a
drink, but he shook his head, not having any manners, in spite of
what people say about the politeness of Frenchmen. Having secured
my own safety and made the lunatic reasonably comfortable, I
turned in and went to sleep. I must have slept very sound, for
although the train stopped two or three times during the night, I
never woke up until we pulled up for breakfast about eight o’clock
the next morning. I sat up and looked at my lunatic, who was wide
awake and glaring at me. I wished him good-morning, for I couldn’t
bear any grudge against a crazy man; but he only rolled his eyes
and seemed madder than ever, so I let him lie and got out of the
train.
“Two policemen were walking up and down the platform, and I
took one of them by the arm and led him to the car, explaining what
had happened. I don’t know whether he understood or not, but he
pretended that he didn’t.
“As soon as he saw the lunatic there was a pretty row. He called
two more policemen, and after they had ungagged the fellow they
hauled us both before a magistrate who had his office in the railroad
station. At least he acted like a magistrate, although he wore the
same uniform as the policemen. Here the fellow I had travelled with
was allowed to speak first, and he charged me, as I afterward found,
with having first insulted and then assaulted him. He said he rather
thought I was a lunatic, but at any rate he must have my blood. Then
an interpreter was sent for, and I told my story, but I could see that
nobody believed me.

“THEY HAULED US BOTH BEFORE A MAGISTRATE.”

“‘Accused,’ said the magistrate very sternly, ‘you called this

gentleman a pig. What was your motive?’
 “Of course I swore that I had never called him a pig, that I hardly
knew half a dozen words of his infamous language, and that I had
used only one of those. Being asked what it was, I said ‘cochon.’
And then that idiot ordered me to be locked up.
“By rare good luck there happened to be an American secretary of
legation on the train. You know him. It was Hiram G. Trask, of West
Centreopolis. He recognized me, and it didn’t take him very long to
explain the whole affair. It seems that the Frenchman had asked me
if I objected to smoking, and when I tried to tell him that we ought to
go to sleep, I said ‘cochon,’ which means pig, instead of ‘couchons,’
which was the word I ought to have used. He was no more of a
lunatic than a Frenchman naturally is, but he was disgusted at being
carried two hundred miles beyond his destination, which was the first
stopping-place beyond Paris, and I don’t know that I blame him very
much. And then, too, he seemed to feel that his dignity had been
some ruffled by being gagged and bound. However, both he and the
policemen listened to reason, and the man agreed to compromise on
my paying him damages and withdrawing the assertion that he was
morally or physically a pig. The affair cost considerable, but it taught
me a lesson, and I have quit believing that you can’t travel in a
European railroad car without being locked up with a lunatic or a
murderer. I admit that the whole trouble was due to my foolishness.
When the Frenchman began to make a row, I ought to have killed
him and dropped the body out of the door, instead of fooling with him
half the night and trying to make him comfortable. But we can’t
always command presence of mind or see just where our duty lies at
all times.”
 THOMPSON’S TOMBSTONE.
We had just dined in the little Parisian restaurant where Americans
are in the habit of going in order to obtain those truly French
delicacies, pork and beans, buckwheat cakes, corned beef, apple
pie, and overgrown oysters. I knew a man from Chicago who dined
at this restaurant every day during the entire month spent by him in
Paris, and who, at the end of that time, said that he was heartily sick
of French cookery. Thus does the profound study of the manners
and customs of foreign nations enlighten the mind and ripen the
judgment.
The Colonel had finished his twelfth buckwheat cake and had
lighted his cigar, when he casually and reprovingly remarked to
young Lathrop, who, on principle, was disputing the bill with the
waiter, that “he was making more trouble than Thompson’s
tombstone.” Being called upon to explain this dark saying, he
stretched his legs to their limit, tipped back his chair, knocked the
ashes of his cigar among the remnants of his pork and beans, and
launched into his story.
“In the town where I was raised—and I’m not going to give away
the name of it at present—there were two brothers, James and John
Thompson. They were twins and about forty years old, as I should
judge. James was a bachelor and John he was a widower, and they
were both pretty well to do in the world, for those times at least. John
was a farmer and James was a wagon maker and owned the village
hearse besides, which he let out for funerals, generally driving it
himself, so that any profit that was to be made out of a melancholy
occasion he could make without sharing it with anybody. Both the
men were close-fisted, and would look at a dollar until their eyesight
began to fail before they could bring themselves to spend it. It was
this miserly spirit that brought about the trouble that I’m going to tell
you of.
“After John Thompson had been a widower so long that the
unmarried women had given up calling on him to ask his advice
about the best way of raising money for the heathen, and had lost all
expectation that any one of them would ever gather him in, he
suddenly ups and marries Maria Slocum, who used to keep a candy
store next door to the school-house and had been a confirmed old
maid for twenty years. She had a little money, though, and folks did
say that she could have married James Thompson if she had been
willing to take the risk; but the fact that James always had the hearse
standing in his carriage-house made him unpopular with the ladies.
She took John because his views on infant baptism agreed with
hers, and he took her because she had a good reputation for making
pies and was economical and religious.
“The Thompson brothers owned burial lots in the new cemetery
that were close together. James, of course, had, so far, no use for
his lot, but John had begun to settle his by burying his first wife in
about the middle of it. The lot was a good-sized one, with
accommodation for a reasonably large family without crowding them,
and without, at the same time, scattering them in any unsocial way. I
don’t know how it came about, but no sooner was John married than
he took a notion to put up a tombstone over his first wife. He thought
that as he was going to incur such an expense he would manage it
so that he wouldn’t have to incur it again; and so he got up a design
for a combination family tombstone, and had it made, and carved,
and lettered, and set up in his burial lot.
“Near the top of the stone was John Thompson’s name, the date
of his birth, and a blank space for the date of his death. Next came
the name of ‘Sarah Jane, beloved wife of the above,’ and the date of
her birth and death. Then came the name of ‘Maria, beloved and
lamented wife of the above John Thompson,’ with the date of her
birth and a space for the date of her death. You see, John worked in
this little compliment about Maria being ‘lamented’ so as to reconcile
her to having the date of her birth given away to the public. The
lower half of the tombstone was left vacant so as to throw in a few
children should any such contingency arise, and the whole
advertisement ended with a verse of a hymn setting forth that the
entire Thompson family was united in a better land above.
“The cost of the affair was about the same as that of one ordinary
tombstone, the maker agreeing to enter the dates of John’s death
and of his wife’s death free of charge whenever the time for so doing
might arrive; and also agreeing to enter the names of any children
that might appear at a very low rate. The tombstone attracted a great
deal of attention, and the summer visitors from the city never failed
to go and see it. John was proud of his stroke of economy, and used
to say that he wasn’t in danger of being bankrupted by any epidemic,
as those people were who held that every person must have his
separate tombstone. Everybody admitted that the Thompson
tombstone gave more general amusement to the public than any
other tombstone in the whole cemetery. Every summer night John
used to walk over to his lot and smoke his pipe, leaning on the fence
and reading over the inscriptions. And then he would go and take a
fresh look at the Rogers’ lot, where there were nine different
tombstones, and chuckle to think how much they must have cost old
man Rogers, who had never thought of a combination family tomb.
In the course of about three years the inscriptions had grown, for
there had been added the names of Charles Henry and William
Everett Thompson, ‘children of the above John and Maria
Thompson,’ and John calculated that with squeezing he could enter
four more children on the same stone, though he didn’t really think
that he would ever have any call so to do.
“Well, a little after the end of the third year John’s troubles began.
He took up with Second Advent notions and believed that the end of
the world would arrive, as per schedule, on the 21st of November, at
8:30 a.m. Maria said that this was not orthodox and that she wouldn’t
allow any such talk around her house. Both of them were set in their
ways, and what with John expressing his views with his whip-handle
and Maria expressing hers with the rolling-pin, they didn’t seem to
get on very well together, and one day Maria left the house and took
the train to Chicago, where she got a divorce and came back a free
and independent woman. That wasn’t all: James Thompson now
saw his chance. He offered to sell out the hearse business, and after
waiting ten months, so as to give no opportunity for scandal, Maria
married him.
“John didn’t seem to mind the loss of his wife very much until it
happened to occur to him that his combination family tombstone
would have to be altered, now that Maria was not his wife any longer.
He was a truthful man, and he felt that he couldn’t sleep in peace
under a tombstone that was constantly telling such a thumping lie as
that Maria was resting in the same burying-lot and that she was his
beloved wife, when, in point of fact, she was another man’s wife and
would be, at the proper time, lying in that other man’s part of the
cemetery. So he made up his mind to have the marble-cutter chisel
out Maria’s name and the date of her birth. But before this was done
he saw that it wouldn’t be the square thing so far as Charles Henry
and William Everett were concerned. It would be playing it low down
on those helpless children to allow that tombstone to assert that they
were the children of John Thompson and some unspecified woman
called Maria, who, whatever else she may have been, was certainly
not John Thompson’s wife. Matters would not be improved if the
name of Maria were to be cut out of the line which stated the
parentage of the children, for in that case it would appear that they
had been independently developed by John, without the intervention
of any wife, which would be sure to give rise to gossip and all sorts
of suspicions.
 “DIDN’T SEEM TO GET ON VERY WELL TOGETHER.”

“Of course the difficulty could have been settled by erasing from
the tombstone all reference to Maria and her two children, but in that
case a separate stone for the children would some day become
necessary, and, what was of more consequence, John’s grand idea
of a combination tombstone would have to be completely
abandoned. John was not a hasty man, and after thinking the matter
over until the mental struggle turned his hair gray, he decided to
compromise the matter by putting a sort of petticoat around the lower
half of the tombstone, which would hide all reference to Maria and
the children. This was easily done with the aid of an old pillow-case,
and the tombstone became more an object of interest to the public
than ever, while John, so to speak, sat down to wait for better times.

“THE TOMBSTONE BECAME MORE AN OBJECT OF INTEREST TO THE

PUBLIC THAN EVER.”

“Now, James had been thinking over the tombstone problem, and
fancied that he had found a solution of it that would put money in his
own pocket and at the same time satisfy his brother. He proposed to
John that the inscription should be altered so as to read: ‘Maria,
formerly wife of John and afterward of James Thompson,’ and that a
hand should be carved on the stone with an index-finger pointing
toward James’ lot, and a line in small type saying, ‘See small
tombstone.’ James said that he would pay the cost of putting up a
small uninscribed stone in his own lot over the remains of Maria—
waiting, of course, until she should come to be remains—and that
John could pay the cost of altering the inscriptions on the large
stone. The two brothers discussed this scheme for months, each of
them being secretly satisfied with it, but John maintaining that James
should pay all the expenses.
“This James would not do, for he reasoned that unless John came
to his terms the combination tombstone would be of no good to
anybody, and that if he remained firm John would come round to his
proposal in time.
“There isn’t the least doubt that this would have been the end of
the affair, if it had not been that James chuckled over it so much that
one day he chuckled a fishbone into his throat and choked to death
on the spot. He was buried in his own lot, with nothing but a wooden
headboard to mark the spot. His widow said that if he had been
anxious to have a swell marble monument he would have made
provision for it in his lifetime, and as he had done nothing of the kind,
she could not see that she had any call to waste her money on
worldly vanities.
“How did this settle the affair of the combination tombstone? I’m
just telling you. You see, by this time the world had not come to an
end, and John, who always hated people who didn’t keep their
engagements, seeing that the Second Adventists didn’t keep theirs,
left them and returned to the regular Baptist fold. When his brother
died he went to the funeral, and did what little he could, in an
inexpensive way, to comfort the widow. The long and short of it was
that they became as friendly as they ever had been, and John finally
proposed that Maria should marry him again. ‘You know, Maria,’ he
said, ‘that we never disagreed except about that Second Advent
nonsense. You were right about that and I was wrong, as the event
has proved, and now that we’re agreed once more, I don’t see as
there is anything to hinder our getting married again.’
“Maria said that she had a comfortable support, and she couldn’t
feel that it was the will of Providence for her to be married so often,
considering how many poor women there were who couldn’t get a
single husband.
“‘Well,’ continued John, ‘there is that there tombstone. It always
pleased you and I was always proud of it. If we don’t get married
again that tombstone is as good as thrown away, and it seems
unchristian to throw away a matter of seventy-five dollars when the
whole thing could be arranged so easy.’
“The argument was one which Maria felt that she could not resist,
and so, after she had mourned James Thompson for a fitting period,
she married John a second time, and the tombstone’s reputation for
veracity was restored. John and Maria often discussed the feasibility
of selling James’ lot and burying him where the combination
tombstone would take him in, but there was no more room for fresh
inscriptions, and besides, John didn’t see his way clear to stating in a
short and impressive way the facts as to the relationship between
James and Maria. So, on the whole, he judged it best to let James
sleep in his own lot, and let the combination tombstone testify only to
the virtues of John Thompson and his family. That’s the story of
Thompson’s tombstone, and if you don’t believe it I can show you a
photograph of the stone with all the inscriptions. I’ve got it in my
trunk at this very moment, and when we go back to the hotel, if you
remind me of it, I’ll get it out.”
 A UNION MEETING.
“Well, sir,” said the Colonel, “since you ask me what struck me
most forcibly during my tour of England, and supposing that you
want a civil answer to a civil question, I will say that the thing that
astonished me more than anything else was the lack of religious
enterprise in England.
 “THE LACK OF RELIGIOUS ENTERPRISE IN ENGLAND.”

“I have visited nearly every section of your country, and what did I
find? Why, sir, in every town there was a parish church of the
regulation pattern and one other kind of church, which was generally
some sort of Methodist in its persuasion. Now, in America there is
hardly a village which hasn’t half a dozen different kinds of churches,
and as a rule at least one of them belongs to some brand-new
denomination, one that has just been patented and put on the
market, as you might say. When I lived in Middleopolis, Iowa, there
were only fifteen hundred people in the place, but we had six kinds
of churches. There was the Episcopalian, the Methodist, the
Congregational, the Baptist, the Presbyterian, the Unitarian, and the
Unleavened Disciples church, not to mention the colored Methodist
church, which, of course, we didn’t count among respectable white
denominations. All these churches were lively and aggressive, and
the Unleavened Disciples, that had just been brought out, was as
vigorous as the oldest of them. All of them were furnishing good
preaching and good music, and striving to outdo one another in
spreading the Gospel and raising the price of pew-rents. I could go
for two or three months to the Presbyterian church, and then I could
take a hack at the Baptists and pass half a dozen Sundays with the
Methodists, and all this variety would not cost me more than it would
have cost to pay pew-rent all the year round in any one church. And
then, besides the preaching, there were the entertainments that each
church had to get up if it didn’t want to fall behind its rivals. We had
courses of lectures, and returned missionaries, and ice-cream
festivals till you couldn’t rest. Why, although I am an old theatrical
manager, I should not like to undertake to run a first-class American
church in opposition to one run by some young preacher who had
been trained to the business and knew just what the popular
religious taste demanded. I never was mixed up in church business
but once, and then I found that I wasn’t in my proper sphere.”
The Colonel chuckled slowly to himself, as his custom was when
anything amused him, and I asked him to tell me his ecclesiastical
experience.
“Well, this was the way of it,” he replied. “One winter the leading
citizens of the place decided to get up a series of union meetings.
Perhaps you don’t know what a union meeting is? I thought so. It
bears out what I was saying about your want of religious enterprise.
Well, it’s a sort of monster combination, as we would say in the
profession. All the churches agree to hold meetings together, and all
the preaching talent of the whole of them is collected in one pulpit,
and each man preaches in turn. Of course every minister has his
own backers, who are anxious to see him do himself and his
denomination credit, and who turn out in full force so as to give him
their support. The result is that a union meeting will always draw,
even in a town where no single church can get a full house, no
matter what attractions it may offer.